Deadly Halloween tableau too realistic for some

By KRISTI EATON Associated Press

Posted:
10/17/2013 11:47:22 AM MDT

Updated:
10/17/2013 03:24:06 PM MDT

Click photo to enlarge

Johnnie Mullins poses with his controversial Halloween display featuring headless dummies dressed in his work clothes at his home in Mustang, Okla, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. In the display, one dummy lies under a truck with blood splattered on the driveway, foreground, and another along the blood-stained garage door. Mullins' wife, Jennifer, said she got the idea for the macabre scene from the social media site Pinterest.

MUSTANG, Okla.—One man lies on his stomach on the driveway. Blood is splattered along the garage door that smashed his head and presumably killed him. Another man lies a few feet away, run over by a truck.

The scene in a middle-class Oklahoma neighborhood made of single-story homes and well-manicured lawns seems out of a horror story because, well, it is. The two accident victims are in fact dummies, created as part of a family's vivid Halloween display to shock and frighten.

And it certainly has. At least one woman has called 911 to report that a man's head had been shut into the garage door. Emergency personnel who responded discovered a dummy.

Jennifer Mullins, of Mustang, said she got the idea for the macabre scene from the social media site Pinterest and showed her husband, Johnnie, who was happy to scare up a display while he was on worker's compensation and unable to work. Using Johnnie's work clothes and blankets for stuffing, the couple first placed one life-sized dummy at the garage in early October and the next day, placed one next to the truck. A sign above the dummy in the garage door reads "you're next." The front yard is filled with spider webs, skeletons, crosses and RIP signs.

Mullins knew the ghastly display would raise some eyebrows, but she's surprised by just how much attention it's received, mainly online.

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"People think we went too far, and you know, we're devil worshippers and we must not be Christian folk," the 32-year-old mother of two girls said. "They've said all kinds of stuff. But we're normal. We love Jesus. We celebrate Halloween."

As for the woman who called 911, Mullins called it "ridiculous" and said if it was her, she would have gotten out of her car to check on the person and then seen it was a dummy.

"Plus, I'd probably put two and two together, seeing the decorations in the front yard and then seeing the bodies and then think, 'Oh, it's Halloween,'" Mullins said.

A spokeswoman for the local police department said no crime has been committed because of the false-alarm 911 call.

Some of the Mullins' neighbors said that while the display initially created some spine-chilling moments for them, they aren't opposed to it.

Chris Wilson, 38, who lives a few houses down, said he was driving by on his motor scooter when he saw what he thought was the body of his neighbor collapsed under the weight of the garage door, blood trickling from his body. He grabbed his phone and ran over to the home, prepared to call for help. But then he realized the body was fake, made up of cloth and blankets.